People routinely point out how much more articulate he was X years ago. Reporter Maggie Habberman, who has spoken to him regularly over the years, indicated there was a sharp change when he went from speaking about business matters, which he’s familiar with, to speaking about politics and government, where he knows absolutely nothing. So I don’t know if the disjointed speech patterns were already there and he became much more vague as a result of that transition, or being able to speak about familiar things masked any cognitive decline, but it complicates seeing changes over time.

Even in interviews, the problem is that previously he was being interviewed about things in his comfort zone (which mostly involved just giving his opinion), but now he’s well out of the zone (and being asked hard questions about facts), he can’t even bullshit properly, which changes how articulate he can be. So it’s hard to tell how much of his word salad is due to cognitive decline (where previously, in business, being able to speak about familiar subjects using well-worn phrases might have masked it), and how much is just due to his total confusion about his new position (where suddenly his life-long stupidity is leaving him without the cognitive tools to switch gears and learn enough to even fake it). I personally suspect it’s a mixture of both, but I’m not sure how much of each is at play.

Is anyone other than Putin operating as Trump’s nanny that they have to inform him as to what is appropriate or not? I guess when you pattern your appreciations on an autocracy, nothing seems unreasonable. Trump doesn’t seem to see the value in anything unless he is there amidst it and operates on the assumption that what pisses other people off can only mean he is doing a good job. It doesn’t mean that something is right, it means that someone is an asshole.